There are many known techniques of identifying an individual through the identification of the individual's fingerprint. The use of an ink pad and the direct transfer of ink by the thumb or finger from the ink pad to a recording card is the standard way of making this identification.
However, it has long been recognized that there are many limitations and drawbacks to this standard technique and thus many alternate proposals have been made and alternate techniques developed, some of which are in limited use. However, on balance, none of these alternate techniques provide an adequate solution to the problems of the standard technique and, indeed, the alternate techniques all tend to create other problems.
Incidentally, in connection with the discussion and disclosure herein, the term finger will be used in the generic sense to refer to what is commonly known as a thumb as well as to fingers and, indeed, any prints that may be taken of an individual's toes, foot or hand. However, it is convenient for many purposes to use an individual's thumb as an identifying base.
Although the average person is aware of the messy cumbersome nature of the standard ink transfer technique of taking finger-prints, there are even greater problems with the present techniques from the point of view of either law enforcement officials or those who would use the fingerprint for credit or other identification. Essentially, the quality of the fingerprint obtained tends to be poor. Thus, the necessary resolution required to provide ready classification and unambigious identification is missing.
Fingerprint identification has significant potential application in many fields other than law enforcement but is limited to law enforcement fields in most part because of its messy nature and general unacceptability. The other fields in which identification of the unique features of each individual would be useful include all sorts of security situations, credit card identification situations, industrial access identification situations and even in those situations where a signature is used for comparison with the individual's signature on file as in many banking and commercial transactions.
Accordingly, it is a major purpose of this invention to provide a much more acceptable and thus more widely usuable technique for identifying the individual's unique characteristics that are carried by the pattern of the lines and sworls which constitute an individual's finger surface configuration and which when impressed by standard techniques provide the individual's unique fingerprint.